Pay equity

The passage below from today's Ottawa Citizen deals with the functional end of pay equity at the Federal level.

Attentive readers will recall that this was just about the only issue that seriously troubled me when it came to supporting the Budget.

I still see it as a real concern -- equal pay for equal work is not some leftist radical thing -- it's just fair play:

"Not Judy Wasylycia-Leis, though. For the veteran New Democrat from Winnipeg, the Commons vote in favour of the budget bill this week marked "the complete death of something we fought for 30 years ago. I never thought we'd lose something that fundamental, just overnight, in one fell swoop."

She is talking about federal pay equity -- an ambitious, complex and unfinished attempt to ensure women in female-dominated occupations in the public sector are not underpaid compared to male colleagues in similar, but male-dominated, jobs. It is an attempt to eliminate "pink ghettos," or obvious inequalities -- mostly-women librarians, for instance, being paid less that mostly-male archivists, notwithstanding similar education levels and responsibilities.

It hasn't been an unalloyed success.

Overall, women still earn 70 per cent less than men in Ontario, for instance, which has had pay equity legislation for 20 years.

Nor is there parity across the country. Some provinces like Manitoba and Ontario have their own pay equity laws, most don't. And private sector workers are mostly not covered.

Then there is the painfully slow process of achieving justice. Under the federal system, complaints are heard by the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Bell Canada workers have been waiting 15 years for a verdict, Air Canada's female employees about 17 years and a case involving Canada Post has dragged on 25 years.

Some delay is inevitable: employers fight fiercely because restitution can be costly; it can be contentious and time-consuming to compare job categories; and human rights commissions have developed a reputation for being plodding nit-pickers. But even supporters of pay equity concede the current system is seriously flawed. "

James Morton